Brand name and generic blood pressure medications
Blood pressure medicines get more expensive every day. That’s why lots of people with hypertension are giving generic equivalents a try. Brand name medications and generic medications are supposed to be equivally effective. Generics are just available more affordably. When the patent on a drug expires, it becomes available to be distributed as generic. This means that a number of companies can produce and distribute that drug, making it available at lower costs.
Doctors and consumers sometimes worry that generic blood pressure medications are not as effective as brand name medications. In particular, they are concerned that they may not really be clinically equivalent. It’s easy to see why lots of people initially think that less expensive products lack quality.
Brand name and generic blood pressure medications, however, produce equivalent chemical actions. For this reason, they are called “bioequivalent”. The only difference between generic medications and brand name medications is appearance, such as shape and size, and the types of inactive fillers that are used. Sometimes this is confusing for consumers. They are used to looking at their brand name medication, and the different appearance of the generic medication can be startling.
As far as generic heart medications and blood pressure medications are concerned, there seems to be no difference in the effectiveness of generics when compared with brand names. You can find an analysis of a number of drugs used for cardiovascular disease and hypertension by looking at this month’s Journal of the American Medical Association. They published a study of these drugs. The AMA analyzed 47 different studies that compared generic and brand name blood pressure medications. All of these studies indicated that the two were equivalent in efficacy. Generic blood pressure medicines and brand name blood pressure medicines have never been compared in terms of their equivalency in this manner befor`e. This analysis, the first of its kind, is comprehensive.
According to this study, you can expect to reap the same benefits from generic blood pressure and heart medications as you would get from the brand name equivalent. Regardless of this, a lot of doctors resist turning to generic medications. This is especially prevalent when they prescribe blood pressure and heart medications.
Ask your doctor about generics if you want to save money on your medications. Once you have your doctor’s agreement and you have switched medications, be sure to closely monitor your blood pressure for a few weeks to be sure the medication is working as well as the old one. After a few weeks, if all is well, you can stop monitoring them as rigidly.
March 16th, 2009 - Posted in Medicines | |
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